Sugar daddy site accused of prostitution

An online dating site has been accused of pimping students for "sugar daddies" willing to pay thousands of dollars a week for companionship.

The US-based Seeking Arrangement website pursues university aged women who need financial assistance to help them fund their costly tuition, the reports.

When a 23-year-old woman, known only as Megan, planned to move to New York to study she knew she would struggle to afford it and decided to set up a profile on the site.

Before she had even arrived in the city she received an invitation to go out on a date with a 47-year-old lawyer.

"I was sceptical at first about it because I was like, this is like the kind of thing that could attract a lot of creeps, but [it was] actually really nice," she said.

Two weeks later she entered a relationship with a finance professional aged in his 40s, who pays her $1100 every ten days in exchange for accompanying him on dinner dates and sometimes weekends away.

She said the relationship eventually became physical but added that she "never felt pressured to do anything I didn’t want to do."

"It did eventually reach that point. But it felt natural. It felt just like a normal relationship."

Megan earned around $22,000 from the relationship before breaking it off.

She is currently in another relationship, brokered by the site, that earns her $335 a week.

"I more or less live comfortably because of it. I’m able to pay my rent a little easier. I haven’t been really able to attack the principal amount on my loan," she said.

The enormous cost of university education in the United States ensures that the site has a steady flow of women willing to offer themselves to so-called "sugar daddies".

Megan's annual tuition fees cost her $75,900. With other living expenses factored in she requires around $112,000 a year.

Some critics have said the site is offering a prostitution service but Seeking Arrangement's spokespeople have predictably rejected the assertion.

"Prostitution is black and white; it's just an exchange of sex for money," Seeking Arrangement's public-relations manager Angela Jacob Bermudo said.

"On Seeking Arrangement, people are coming to find their ideal relationship. It’s about the connection.

"These men are shelling out US$3,000 ($3,350) a month for a sugar baby. That's not something that a man is going to spend for a simple, one-night engagement."

Source: New York Post